up up and awayyy

(except the ice cream man shot, photo credits to dr. koo chiehshen)

it's been awhile.

had a wonderful time with family and friends on sunday (thank you!!!)
and was finally ready to go. 

uneventful flight to london and currently in the country for a week of pre-uni vegging out. 

 thoroughly enjoying the pastoral surroundings, small towns and supreme hospitality. 

have a ton of books for company, the best of british tabloid trash
and family just a whatsapp message away.

plus there's wireless so i could be constantly plugged in.

but that would defeat the purpose of vegging out, wouldn't it.

either way, what more can a girl ask for? :)

catch you when i'm back in the city!

p/s because these meatballs are fast reaching their expiry date, it would be apt to direct you to the new blog.  

mysterymeatballs started out as an exchange blog while i was in stockholm in 2009, and then the second helping chronicled the second half of the bar exam course, starting work, and all the way till i decided to go back to school. so it looks like it's time to move! 

thanks for stopping by, and do visit at doctorlawyerindianchief if you'd like to check in.

spring cleaning finds

it just hit me that this brief pre-departure stretch is sort of the last time i'll be living at home, and in my room. 

big transitions on the horizon and when i return next summer, i do think i'll have to move. no plans to come back in between starting school and the end of first year so i'm going through all my earthly possessions and doing my darndest to sort them out. 

first there's clothes - what do i keep, what do i pack to bring, what do i give away, what do i donate. fortunately, being unsentimental and generally minimalistic means i've made it through the clothing challenge relatively quickly. 

but my books! oh my books :( and that's when it starts to get trickier. my lovingly annotated literature books? my collection of intellectual reads (haha) slowly amassed over the years? my mountain of cosmos, also amassed over the years? poetry books from former flings (haha, again)? and my folder of cross-disciplinary A+ work since primary school? not like it's very thick, but, still!

cleaning whinge aside, there is some good that comes out of this massive operation.

like this old photo of yvie and i!
gotta love the retro hair and vacuous stares. 

two decades later, nothing has changed :)

crib warming

bull pup flying solo

a wave of pre-nostalgia hit me when i went to visit xj in her brand new office. excited for her and because i'm living vicariously through her, i thought i better pay my dues by helping beautify the space a little. also, i do feel somewhat for leaving her in the lurch as the most junior on the team. whatever first-yearer work that should've gone to the both of us will unforch almost all land on her lap. but hopefully another name plate will fill the empty slot on the door, and it won't be too long before she has a roomie. 

we'd a great run as bull pups though, and i've fond memories of our pups' corner.

p/s doesn't she look happy for someone who just started the rest of her life?! wow. awesome work ethic yo.

tgif at tbc

what better way to celebrate xj's last day of call break than a three hour pampering session, followed in quick succession by an afternoon at the beach. we planned this looong ago, from the confines of our shared cubicle, and all too soon call break was upon us. 

couldn't have picked a more perfect day to head to the beach and just as we tired of the blue skies (it's possible, believe me...) the clouds rolled in and we'd perfect cloud cover.

when we'd our fill at tbc, i decided it was high time that xj went to restore. funny story: the restore recommendation first came from xj herself and after i became a regular, she still hadn't gone! this just goes to show how she's a A+ employee and works way harder than i ever did. anyhoos, it'd be a blooming waste to be so near and not stop by so we whiled away the rest of the evening over waffles, deep in discussion about return of investment. 

yay to girlfriends! and fridays! and NOT HAVING TO WORK :D

billy jean

back from perth and have some major spring cleaning to do! before starting work, i was supposed to get my open water dive licence. but i was unceremoniously summoned to the office a week earlier than anticipated. in protest, i spent what would've gone towards my dive holiday on a suitable work wardrobe. fast forward two months and upon being accepted into medsch it dawned on me that i would have no need for said work wardrobe. so i now have a whole lot of hardly worn, pre-loved work wear that i'm putting up for adoption. timing works out beautifully though, and i think yvie's gonna be the biggest beneficiary in this self-styled clothes coup.

currently clearing through six months of clothes and other barang barang that i've somehow managed to accumulate, and billy jean is playing. funny how i'm catapulted back to our 80s parties at the gula villan (yellow house) on campus in stockholm u. we wore our "bad taste" clothes, almost all procured from beyond retro, and belted out the chorus in unison. for some, it was probably the only english they could muster but bottle in hand and song on lips we'd while the night that never really got dark away. 

good times, and hanging with the aussie crew down under really brought all these happy happy erasmus memories bubbling back to the surface of my consciousness. we swear we don't live in the past, but sometimes it is so very hard to avoid the self-indulgent nostalgia trip.

lunching with yvie at cocotte tomorrow because we're intent on being ladies who lunch, just for one day, then filing my call papers back in the office. and then we'll see where the wind blows :)

happy birthday E

and thank you for the most fantabulous meal ever.

nature ramble and popiah

doesn't "nature ramble" conjure images of boarding school bliss in malory towers or st claire's? yvie and i grew up on a staple of enid blyton that fed our inner anglophile. incidentally, the lovely ladies are the clare medics class of 2011. and jenny loves nature and the rest are adventurous so how else to introduce them to singapore but a true blue tropical ramble at the tree top trail!

we set off but were waylaid by the siren calls of beef curry puff and fresh fruit juice at the poolside. oops :)

when we did finally get going, the weather was most threatening...

but we soldiered on through the secondary rainforest.

until we saw the exit point for the one way tree top trail, realising that in our excitement and distracted by the chatter, we MISSED THE ENTRY POINT COMPLETELY. oops again.

undaunted, we continued walking in search of the next big thing, not dissimilar to talent scouts, really. as luck would have it, there was a tower ahead just asking to be climbed.

climb we did, and were rewarded by this view at the top

satisfied that we at least did get to see the tree tops as yvie had promised, we headed back for popiah. but not before jenny got up close and personal with the flora and fauna (little boy not included) on the way.

after our outdoor adventure, it was time for some indoor excitement. all said "aye!" to a well earned popiah meal to compensate for the evening's exertion. we'd a hoot sitting in on yvie's popiah rolling tutorial and the girls really liked it :) yay! singapore cuisine boleh...

 

victorious with their well rolled popah!

the end.

yvie comes home

with three lovely friends in tow!

yvie's my oldest friend 20 (!!!) years and counting and hand on heart my absolute favourite person on earth. she's goodness and light, has the driest sense of humour and is fantastically brilliant to boot. but you'd never know she was a big a brainiac as she is because she's so unassuming and not in the least bit braggy boots. she's finally home for good after six years away and her coursemates saw her home. talk about an awesome sending off haha - her friends came home with her! 

and because they were visiting over a weekend, i was only too happy to traipse around with them. these troopers landed bright and early on saturday morning and we hit the ground running. after a gas station breakfast (necessity > epicuriosity), they dived head first into their dempsey tour.

we started with lunch that gave jenny, kathy and ashna their first taste of snail!

and then moved on to visit the white rabbit, promising to return for drinks because the girls fell in love with the place, and the swing. don't they look pretty sitting there?

didn't know they were big ben & jerry's fans but yay to cooperative models and a cute van

you might guess by now that we've a thing for swings...

after dempsey, yvie and i showed them around emerald hill for some perserved heritage and peranakan architecture

frangipani tree!

yvie is ever graceful - this was just after we were chided for trespassing at our old school, also at emerald hill. teehee the doors were open so we strolled right in and managed to take some photos before an angry, official-looking person chased us out. boo :(

from emerald hill, we just had to ride the outdoor escalators

and no trip to orchard road is complete without ice cream from the push cart uncle.

happy campers!

Thursdays With Vidhya

Speaking of traditions, one tradition that I’m so glad to have begun is “Thursdays with Vidhya”. We’ve an ongoing lunch date every Thursday and meet at the big Chevron House screen at 1pm. Usually Vidz gets there before I do and seeing her resplendent in her office chic glory is a sight for sore eyes. Much as I enjoy visiting new places, with Vidz I become a creature of habit and we go to the same few places and eat the same few things. And because this was our penultimate Thursday together, I can safely say we go to either Cedele or Wang. We’ve ventured to Philip Street once or twice for the exercise, and another time she condescended to having Arcade fish soup with me. But it’s really not about where we go, because looking forward to Thursdays with Vidz has been a big part of my time as a pupil. Sure, we all look forward to Friday, but to go to bed on Wednesday night knowing that we’d be lunch in 12hours is always such a mood-lifter :) Double dose of anticipation ftw! Another cute thing about Thursdays with Vidz is that no matter how tired we are, we make a point to dress up for each other. Nothing like having a girlfriend check you out and validate the look…

And whilst we like to keep lunch “just us”, Dr. Pravin was a more than welcomed addition today.

quite accidentally

 (photo from pooja)

i happened to be a small part of history.

well, sort of.

had a hankering for crab bee hoon and met some like-minded friends for dinner at ghim moh block 10. it was a short trip down memory lane, having gone to a high school, that used shipping containers as classrooms, in the very same neighbourhood.

sometime between slurping the xo soup and chomping on har cheong gai i heard the horn of a train that had my hair standing on end. hadn't planned on being around to witness the last train out of tanjong pagar, but on my way to the red house bus stop i used to have to cross the train tracks and the old rusting trains were a big part of my going home routine.

the railway is also part of another important memory to me. the first holiday i ever went on with just friends i.e. no adults was to KL before starting university. being the backpackers on a budget, the eight of us took the overnight train there and i was almost refused entry into malaysia because in my excitement i went a little trigger happy at the customs checkpoint. oops. not one of my prouder moments but a milestone all the same. 

then i suddenly realised i'd friends on the last train and thought of them clinking flutes and sipping their champers. suddenly my xo fish soup didn't cut it anymore :(

eskimo, my newfound love

My ears aren’t very long so I hadn’t heard of Eskimo till I saw @plongin’s tweet. However, one look at Paul and beautiful lady on his arm and you’d know he’s a man of impeccable taste. So when he raved about the assam black tea with pudding and coffee jelly, I knew I had to try. As luck would have it, a different P who happens to be interning and seated next to me, texted the next day to ask if I’d like some Eskimo. My usual polite self-restraint was cast to the wind and I semi-demanded two cups, one for me and one for cubby buddy.

One sip and I started grinning so wide that cubby commented she’d never seen me that happy, not even after the S$9.3million ruling.

It’s been awhile since I had a brand new drinking experience. I liked that the tea wasn’t too sweet and how well the contrast of textures in each sip worked. The mildly bitter coffee jelly and smooth as silk pudding has me thinking about it even now. And hipster as this choice of tea sounds, it was well and truly a winner.

not an everyday sighting at RP

doesn't it look like it's the two of them off to war against the world?

our men were promoted to captains and the bestest boss on earth gave me "dispensation" (oh how i love that word!) to begin my weekend at 4pm this evening. the promotees pulled a quick change charlie in the office and we hurried to the next street where the waiting steed was parked. made it to the ceremony hall with seconds to spare, although we were relegated to the latecomers' row :(

the ceremony was funny - plagued with technical glitches and they even took a lengthy "technical break" to sort things out. and this was compounded by the one hour of propaganda songs and videos we were subjected to before the actual ceremony. the only thing i concluded is that for the next general elections, home should be played on repeat at the polling booths if the incumbents want to guarantee a landslide victory. just listening to the song once through made me feel more patriotic than i have in months.

on an unrelated note, they joke that in the army, they "wait to rush then rush to wait". today i saw first hand why.

bellyaching aside, twas nice to be a small part of a big part of their lives. and so glad to have had our favourite couple celebrating too :)

puppy play dates

two dear friends i'm very fond of came over to meet the puppies today. i've known P forever because our folks were pre-u (it wasn't even called JC then!) classmates and the whole gin gang, nowsadays with their offspring in tow, make a point to meet every christmas and new year. so i can attest to his being a fine young man as i'm sure ash's been told many times over :) and of course, ash of littlepaperplanes fame needs no introduction. if you aren't already a fan, do clicketyclick over and lose yourself in the wonderful world of ashley with her to-die-for parties and drool-worthy photos. that girl makes me yearn for a taste transplant! somebody gimme her amazing eye and impeccable taste pronto! and speaking of taste transplant, check out P's equally enviable pickings here.

so there you go! PAsh, my new favourite couple and puppies, my new favourite loves make for a wonderful rainy saturday afternoon :)

 (hipsta photo credits to ash!)

antisocial maxx

have lost all hips and haps urges since the pups were born. in the week, i'd rush home from work and spend the rest of the night hovering over their pen just watching them sleep. didn't realise how big a toll they'd take on my pseudo-social life when i spent my previously sacred friday evening passed out on the day bed with an equally comatose pup on my chest. 

love how we begin belly to belly (see previous post with black puppy), and end heart to heart. consistently, the pups wriggle and squirm until they've made their way to my heart, then they stop and sleep ever so peacefully right there. might've woken before the puppy but not wanting to wake her, i did my very best to lie stock still until it was time for their next feed. 

on a separate note, the 'white' pups are getting more golden by the day!

in other other news, maybe i'm just a teensy weensy bit excited to go to butter for the first time ever tonight. 

malacca roadtrip

back from a whirlwind (hurhur) 36 hours in malacca. left bright and early saturday morning and was back in time for dinner with the folks on sunday evening. glad for spontaneous friends, who are game to venture up the peninsular at the drop off the hat. missed kenchy because he was the key player the last time we headed north (july 2009) and my goodness so much has changed since then amongst team string bean. 

it's awesome to have friends who've been there and who will be there. 

also, i'm thrilled to have finally met the latest addition who is smart, spunky, funny and a hottie to boot. lainking did good this time ;)

photos and posts to come!

a race a week

in hindsight, this sort of looks like a makeshift memorial... but yay to surviving a race that neither of us trained for! and for completing it in 37minutes (brag brag) without stopping. in the grand scheme of things, we probably aren't very fast. and relative to vidz and her weekly 15km runs, we're certified unfit. however, surely there's something to be said for last minute stand ins...

quite unfortunately, cubby buddy's fit (doctor) friend had a nightmarish call and still had to vote post call. so cubby buddy called me, her unfit fellow pup and i thought, 'what the heyy...'. famous last words! the weather was ghastly! blistering hot heat and i'd a headache from the sun before we even left the figurative starting blocks. it was solely pupil solidarity that got me through. as i thought of all our late nights holed up in the office, i figured physical exertion is no sweat compared to the mental marathon that is work. 

so we huffed and we puffed and we made it to the finish line, and then proceeded to cam-ho in true pseudo-teenage fashion on the top of marina barrage. props to xj for doing so fantastically well despite being swamped with trial after trial, and having to be on standby for a superimportantabsolutelymustsucceed matter this weekend... respect!

 

plus, for the rest of the week, i get to brag that i've done 2 races in 2 weeks. teehee!

singers from the sea

is even more picturesque when one's bubbly, spirited BFF comes along :) 

i am constantly amazed by her energy! by the time we linked up at noon, she had already run 15km and cast her vote - not simultaneously, of course. having rolled outta bed at 1150 myself, she put me to shame :( and then she proceeded to bound and stride to the sampan. oh, to be gifted with long indian legs...

it was blisteringly hot but the prospect of iced tea and dimsum after the spin kept us going, as did the sight of the ships because missy barbracuda happens to be a shipping lawyer who does sexyyy shipping deals. we were both tickled by how she's probably one of the few people who is reminded of work while out at sea, apart from pirates...

p/s this is V from the previous post. yep, the one who runs at lightning speed.